Analogizing and Resisting: Examining Youth Perspectives of Transformational Institutional Claims in a University-Community Equity Intervention

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Reimagining Community and School Partnership (Table 20)

Abstract

In this critical qualitative study, we examine and interrogate a predominantly white university’s youth intervention program that serves local middle-school youth from surrounding minoritized communities. This type of university-based initiative aspires to community transformation and working toward disrupting social and racial injustice. However, we found key discrepancies in the stated liberatory goals of the program and students’ more “school-like” experiences of the program, with implications for design of justice-oriented programming. We also draw attention to the power imbalance and disparate outcomes between the university and the community. While social justice discourse is valuable in the symbolic economy of diversity and equity, such programming still has the potential to further perpetuate unjust university-community relations under the guise of community transformation.

Authors

• Christopher Hu, University of Alabama

• Nina R. Schoonover, University of Virginia

• Chris K. Chang-Bacon, University of Virginia